Returning A Fish

Returned the irridescent shark to Lang's Tropical Fish. The fish was freaking out with every minor environment change (turning on or off the light, opening the hood to feed the fish, turning off the filtration to remove the clown loach from the output area, etc.) What do I mean by "freaking out"? The fish would swim hard back and forth into the sides of the tank, and after a while of doing that, it would looked distressed or even dead, floating in the tank on its side or back. I checked on the Internet about the fish and found that this species is KNOWN for being a nervous fish. I was not surprised. I was surprised to find that the fish can grow rapidly - up to 20 inches long in as short a time as six months. I decided that I better get the fish out of my tank ASAP and so I returned it for store credit to Lang's.



While on the Internet, I also read that the elephant nose fish likes to hide and others have said that the fish would like to have a PVC pipe of some sort to call "home". While at Lang's, I purchased a seven inch piece of PVC pipe for the fish. When I got home and placed the PVC pipe into the tank, I was surprised to find that the clown loach took up residence underneath a rock that was placed against the pipe. The elephant nose swam through the pipe a couple of times, but it looked like the clown loach was happier with it than the elephant nose.



One thing that I learned at this point is to research BEFORE purchasing anything for the tank. I still didn't do this "well" for a while... And I was still learning...